In late March, as winter unclenches its frigid grip on upstate New York, a spotted salamander's thoughts turn fleetingly to love. After early spring rains soak the forests where the salamanders live, thousands of the slimy little creatures descend on small vernal pools for the amphibian equivalent of an orgy.
"It's sort of a frenzy," says Kelly Zamudio, an ecologist at Cornell University who studies the five-day ritual. "All these males are competing with each other and nudging each other and putting down sperm as quickly as they can."
Spotted salamander sex, it turns out, is an evolutionary. Easter egg hunt. Males lay scores of sperm-filled pouches onto the leaves and ...